Monday, February 17, 2014

Ugh

Prompt #10: "Write a scene where the only spoken dialogue is 'Uh-huh,' 'Umm,' 'Urrrr,' and 'Mm-mmm.'

All I could was sit there and be amazed by his self-proclaimed talent. It was undeniably good, the way he could say nothing and convey so much. I wondered if the person on the other end of the line would ever catch on to the game he was playing.

"Uh-huh." He said it with a long hesitation in the middle preceding a quick upper inflection followed by a drastic fall. It gave the impression of a man who was trying to understand, but didn't quite catch it.

There were a few seconds that I could hear the other voice mumbling from his cell.

"Uh-huh!" This time with a cadence of agreement, followed by a withheld laugh as if he was pretending to be in the company of others who would look down on the joke that he was subtly trying to insinuate, "Mm-mmm"

I almost laughed myself, but he held a finger up to his mouth, which smirked widely as he silently twitched his neck during his own mental laughter. The phone delivered more of the caller's messages, and his face contorted to show his disagreement with what they were saying, but he kept his response as pithy as ever.

"Urrrr," Not disagreeing, but trying to make the caller come up with different options, without doing anything other than passively denying them the original.

This was followed by a quick exchange of slurred noises from the phone and him rapidly repeating 'Uh-huh' after everything they said. At the end, he gave a dismissive yet energetic 'Uh-huh!'

He was right, and I had lost the bet. I slid the five bucks across the table, and asked him if he did that very often to different people.